“Connie went slowly home to Wragby. “Home!” It was a warm word to use for that great weary warren. But then it was a word that had had its day. It was, somehow, cancelled. All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great dynamic words were half-dead now, and dying from day to day. Home was a place you lived in, love was a thing you didn’t fool yourself about, joy was a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a term of hypocrisy you used out of cant, to bluff other people, a father was an individual who enjoyed his own existence, a huband was a man you lived with and kept going, in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great words, it was just a cocktail term for an excitement that buked you up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It was as if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to nothing.